Audience Profiles

Audience profiles

Interstellar

In this document I will be identifying and researching the audiences for 2 films released in the last 5 years. One film must be classed as a blockbuster and the other must be classified as an independent film. The first film I will be looking at is Interstellar, a 2014 science film directed by Christopher Nolan. This will be my choice of blockbuster film for how well it did. For my second film I will be looking at is La La Land, an independent film from 2016.

After looking at many different websites that document research and results about films it is clear that Interstellar is a male oriented film, despite having many references to a love story and romance in it. This is a recurring theme in science based films, from Interstellar to The Core to The Martian to Sunshine. Films that are based on some kind of world ending, scientific scenario all seem to have a more male oriented viewing profile. All of these films a have a largely male audience and are based around some kind of scientific theme, be it going into black holes or the centre of the earth. This may have something to do with the fact that science is a male dominated industry so films about these subjects would garner a more male audience in cinemas. In order to get a proper understanding of how a producer gets insight into the audience that will be watching their films, I had to go back in time and look at the directors and the producers previous films to understand why they did as well as they did. This gives insight into who will be watching a new film from the same people. For Interstellar I looked at Christopher Nolan’s previous film Inception, a film about dreams within dreams and the science behind that. You could even go on to say that when targeting a specific audience for Interstellar the producers will have looked at geo-demographics and regional identities, such as targeting people or places that made Inception successful. This would most likely be places like China, Ireland and Malta, who, outside of the USA and UK, where the highest grossing territories for Inception. Other places like France and Maghreb, Japan and South Korea were also fairly high grossing areas. These places will be have been targeted specifically for the release of Interstellar to help boost its success. The producers of Interstellar will have also looked at which class of people went to see Inception most. From the research I found on the Pearl & Dean website, it shows that almost the entire audience of Inception were from the A to C1 classes, with 82% of the audience being from these classes. This can then be seen to be the same for Interstellar after that film came out, with 75% of the audience for Interstellar being from A to C1, albeit slightly less than Inception. This can be seen as a way of saying that Nolan’s films are more aimed at an upper class audience, but can be seen by all, as shown by Interstellar getting more views from lower classes than Inception.

The producers of Interstellar will most certainly have also looked at the religious ideals of the people who watched Inception as some of the concepts used and talked about can be seen as somewhat religious, from the way it interprets death and the ‘out-there’ about space and time travel. Some people could say this is showing a negative light on belief in a higher power, especially since the ending literally references a god-like figure creating a space for the main character to alter the past and mess with time.

La La Land

 

For the second film I am analysing the audience of I chose La La Land, mainly because it is technically classed as an independent film but also because I think it is a fantastic film. Although this film was a massive blockbuster film that was nominated for 14 Oscars, drawing for the most ever with James Cameron’s Titanic, it is considered an independent film because of many different things such as; where the funding came from, who was in the film, who worked on making the film and where it was filmed. La La land was funded entirely from the USA and Hong Kong, making it, technically, an independent film. It was also produced by Summit Entertainment along with Black Label Media, Summit being a subsidiary of Lionsgate, an independent film production company. It was also directed by Damien Chazelle, who has only directed one other big screen film before, Whiplash, which was also massively positively received and is about music.

After using the same research sites and yearbooks I sued for my research into interstellar, I found that La La Land was on the opposite end of the sexual spectrum, in that it was a more female oriented film, albeit only just. This can be seen from 55% of the people who saw it being female. In order to get a better understanding of what went into targeting the audience for La La Land, I had to look back at Damien’s previous film, Whiplash.

Whiplash is a film centred on jazz similar to La La Land, only it is about a drummer rather than a pianist. This film was actually seen by more males than females, possibly due to the lack of a female lead throughout the film, or the fact that it is about drumming, which is seen as a more male musical instrument. This could have had something to do with the reason that La La land has more female viewers than male, because there is a female lead and she has to deal with real female problems in the world of acting. The socio-economic status of the audience could have had something to do with La La lands success, in that a massive 42% of people who went to see it are from the AB class. This could be because it is set in a more high class setting, Hollywood. People who work in Hollywood, or who can play an instrument are seen as higher class than those that cant, also the fact that it is a musical film, which is seen as an older style of film. This could be the reason that a vast majority of the audience that went to see it, 32%, are from the age range of 45+, and another 34% are from the 15-24 age range. La La land may have targeted a specific audience simply from the fact that it is a musical, which is an extremely niche genre these days.

There will almost certainly have been a premade audience for the film from the fact of who is in it and who is working on it. Ryan gosling and Emma stone are both big names in the film world currently, getting bigger and bigger roles every year, so for them to team up and work in a musical together would have been a really big deal, so this will Have drawn an audience to see the film. Another aspect is that Damien Chazelle directed the film, coming straight off the back of his previous success Whiplash. So any audience members who have seen this film will have immediately recognized his name and may have wanted to see la la land simply for that reason alone.